NYC99FA012 · Grumman American AA-5
Grumman American AA-5 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water on approach
From Albany International Airport (ALB) to Provincetown Municipal Airport (PVC)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC99FA012
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 1 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Grumman American AA-5
- Aircraft type
- Grumman American AA-5
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N7100L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Albany International Airport (ALB), Albany, NYTo Provincetown Municipal Airport (PVC)
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Approach
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › IFR procedure, not followed
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Provincetown, MA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot initiated an ILS approach in IMC conditions, at night, from over water. After tracking on the localizer and glideslope for part of the approach, the airplane entered a descent and leveled off at 100 feet for about 12 seconds prior to disappearing from radar. No evidence of a mechanical failure or malfunction was found with the airplane. Both wings had sustained moderate impact damage. The outboard portion of the left wing was not recovered. The pilot had told approach control that if he missed, he would request the approach to a nearby airport. The navigation radio frequencies did not match the instrument approach flown, the missed approach, or the planned subsequent approach.
Probable cause
The failure of the pilot to follow the published instrument approach procedure, which resulted in inadvertent collision with water. Factors in the accident were the dark night and low ceiling.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC99FA012
- Event ID
- 20001211X11324
- Case number
- NYC99FA012
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a2f72dfa7f752a297d382dc73d07860e12e3c2339318a6c18326113aa40d78de; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:22:09.242Z.